


i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Simulation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tattoos, Training trio, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13339410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: After the simulation, Kaito, Maki, and Shuichi try to deal with everything that happened in their own way. Kaito wants to drag them along with his ideas; he's pretending he's okay - but they're doing the exact same thing.





	i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you

Kaito wakes with a start, some unknown adrenaline coursing through his veins. He’s in the middle of his bed; to his left, Maki is clutching tightly onto him, her arms rigid in fear. Gently turning over, he sees that she’s asleep - she gets like this, frequently, and he can’t exactly blame her. Everything went to hell when the simulation ended. They’re still in the clutches of Team Danganronpa; Shuichi is taking this the hardest, of course, since they’re working him half to death, trying to get him to backtrack on his actions at the end of the killing game. Kaito sighs quietly when he thinks of just how much Shuichi is having to bear. It’s not strange for him to come in from his nighttime walks to find Shuichi passed out the sofa, empty alcohol bottles littering the floor, a thick damp hanging in the air.

He tells himself that, as long as he’s strong enough to carry Shuichi and Maki to bed, he isn’t as worthless as he frequently feels.

Thinking of Shuichi makes him roll over once more - as he suspected, Shuichi is absent from their bed. This is normal, but it breaks Kaito’s heart every time he realises that he’s left his lover alone to deal with his post-simulation heartbreak for who-knows-how-long. It’s an even harder decision for him to make now; with Maki asleep, grasping onto him like he’s the last real thing tethering her to sanity, and Shuichi inevitably self-medicating with whiskey in the living room. For a moment, he contemplates. He should be able to think his way out of this - he’s done with fighting his way out of situations, he has no willpower left to fight any more. Eventually, he decides on the solution that he, in the moment, thinks is best.

Softly, sweetly, quietly; he wraps his arms around Maki. Naturally, she wakes up, and seeing her sleepy eyes with dark bags underneath them causes him to chastise himself for disrupting her.

“I didn’t wanna leave you,” he says, “but Shuichi is gone again.”

“Again?” Maki says, her voice low and tired.

“Yeah.”

“We should…” she says; that sentence doesn’t need to be finished. This is almost routine, now.

“Yeah.”

She reluctantly pulls her arms from around him, and he does the same. They get out of their bed; neither of them make an effort to adjust the duvet and make their room look presentable - they’re far beyond that now. Just getting out of bed is enough.

As Kaito suspected, Shuichi is sitting on the sofa, a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

“Hey,” he says, making Shuichi jump and almost drop his drink.

“Y-You scared me.”

“I’m sorry. Are you coming to bed?”

“I-I can’t. It’s… _one of those nights_ again.”

_‘One of those nights’_ has been defined in the past as a night wherein Shuichi physically cannot close his eyes; he becomes bombarded with visions of his friends dying one by one, of Kaede’s hanging body, of _Kaito_ coughing blood, and he focuses on looking at the blank wall ahead until the whites of his eyes pop with ugly, red, scar-like lines. Kaito and Maki have tried in the past; nightlights, cuddles, falling asleep with the television on - nothing works.

“Fuck it,” Kaito says, and jumps over the back of the couch to sit next to Shuichi. Again, he startles him.

“W-What?”

“I’m joining you. There’s no point pretending we’re okay any more.”

“Kaito,” Maki says, “you shouldn’t. Remember - the therapist. She said…you and alcohol…oh, fuck it. Team Danganronpa were paying her anyway.”

They sit on the sofa together, Shuichi sandwiched in the middle; each of his shoulders touching one of theirs - they cement him into reality, but he can’t reciprocate, not when he doesn’t even feel real. Passing the bottle between them, they don’t talk. Shuichi is no doubt thinking about the killing game, about how Team Danganronpa have been threatening him for weeks now - forcing him to comply. Maki is most likely thinking about nothing at all, focusing her mind on a great, white blank of emptiness, the place where thoughts go to die. But Kaito is thinking about something he’s never told the others - he’s thinking about what it felt like to die. 

He’s glad that it was he who had to experience it, instead of them, but nothing will ever compare to the sheer magnitude of such a feeling, be it simulated or not. He remembers the pain of his faux-illness, but he’s reconciled himself with the memory of his body being on fire; it’s the _what-comes-after_ that burdens him, the sweet release of nothing, and then the screaming in his mind - the screaming that followed him into the real world. Unsure of how correct the simulation’s interpretation of death was, he feels compelled to test out what death in the real world feels like.

He shakes this thought off, steels himself, and stands up.

“Come on,” he says, “we need to feel something. All of us.”

“Y-You mean like…a suicide pact?”

“No way,” Kaito says, although the look in Shuichi’s eyes both terrifies and enamours him, “we’re going to get tattoos.”

“But Team Danganronpa said,” Maki says, “we can’t change our appearances for at least a year.”

“Exactly! And a tattoo is something that takes time and money to remove, so they can’t exactly get rid of them in a night. Come on, we’ll just get small ones.”

“I’m in,” Maki says.

“Me too…yeah,” Shuichi replies.

Only an hour later, led blindly by Kaito’s recklessness - a trait that he had possessed even before the killing game - they’re sat anxiously in a tattoo parlour, waiting to be called to the back. Maki goes first, a design clutched in her hand, her face calm and stoic; Kaito sometimes thinks that he’ll never truly know her, but this is a lie.

_That’s not a phrase he likes telling himself._

After Maki, it’s Shuichi’s turn, and Kaito is left alone with his thoughts. He mulls on the recklessness of his actions, of how he’s always pushing Maki and Saihara to do better, achieve more, be happier - but he’s a hypocrite, and he feels it in the hollow echo of his bones. Like, somehow, there’s the shell of a bullet rattling around in his body, carried around not by blood, but by dust and emptiness; it rattles in the night and keeps him awake to fulfil his purpose of being there for his lovers.

And of course, he had an ulterior motive for suggesting that they get tattoos. Honestly, he just wants to feel pain without worrying them. But, as he’s sat in the chair, his mind blanks out - just like it did in the awkward transition from simulation to real life, when everything was nothing, and the only thing present was the never-ending scream of his mind. And he feels nothing.

_He feels nothing._

_He wishes that the needle held cyanide._

_But it doesn’t._

At the end, they stand outside the tattoo parlour in the rain, illuminated by the neon light that tells the world that it’s open every hour of every day. Shuichi holds out his arm.

“I-I got this,” he says, “a huge fucking bottle of alcohol. Try and watch Team Danganronpa cover that shit up.”

“Oh man,” Kaito replies, “you really went all out. Here’s mine.”

Kaito’s is a little set of steps, leading up to an arched window, through which the edge of a planet can be seen. He likes looking at it; he’s desperate to trace his hand over the fresh wound.

“But,” Maki says, “that’s…”

“Yeah, I know. Can’t get the whole space thing outta my head - guess I really did love it even before the game.”

“Still…Team Danganronpa might let you keep that one.”

“Oh, shit,” he says, “I’ve let you guys down.”

He wonders whether either of them can see through his lies; if they could read his thoughts, they’d know that he’s ultimately selfish - he wanted pain, and he dragged them behind him.

_Just like he did back then…_

Maki holds his hand.

“No, you haven’t,” she says, “I think it’s beautiful.”

“Let’s see yours then.”

“Oh, I got these little dice. Before Danganronpa, I had no choice in my life. In the game, they gave me too much choice. Now, I’m just gonna roll the dice and say fuck it. I should be dead anyway.”

“Don’t say that,” Kaito says.

“She’s right,” Shuichi replies, “we all should be dead. But we’re not. So fuck Team Danganronpa.”

“Yeah,” Maki says, “fuck Team Danganronpa.”

Kaito smiles, weakly, fading, but not meaningless.

_Fuck Team Danganronpa._

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the best thing I've ever written but I kinda don't want to just delete it all either so here, have this. Sorry it's not the best - I got three hours of sleep yesterday night and didn't sleep at all tonight (it's approaching 6am here...oops...I'll go to bed soon) so perhaps that has something to do with it. Still, I hope you enjoy it as much as you can, anyway. As always, have a lovely day! :D
> 
> Shuichi's tattoo: [here](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9d/bd/4a/9dbd4ad9115ad00035aed536268fd2ca.jpg).
> 
> Kaito's tattoo: [here](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6e/5a/39/6e5a392d799f5282027782e8e120c459--photo-credit-planet-tattoos.jpg).
> 
> Maki's tattoo: [here](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/03/66/be/0366be121396902ef39f04ce5d990af0--wrist-tattoos-finger-tattoos.jpg).
> 
> Title from 'The Night We Met' by Lord Huron. Listen to it, imagine Maki and Shuichi feeling like this at the end of Chapter Five.


End file.
